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Talk:Cultures and Peoples
Summer Isles The Summer Isles are too far from Sothoryos to be considered part of it.--Gonzalo84 (talk) 03:23, November 12, 2014 (UTC) Very much a work in progress, but you raise a big question: I even asked Elio Garcia directly about this on twitter last week, and he said that they're kind of like New Zealand - which isn't really part of "Australia", but that's our modern understanding of plate tectonics. I mean...is Madagascar "part" of Africa? Well, no, it's an island. Same with the Canary Islands (I think of the Summer Islands sort of like super-sized Canary Islands, though this isn't that fitting). Naath isn't really part of Sothoryos either (it's fairly far out in the ocean). Physically. And I do want to note this in here at some point but...if we just leave the Summer Islands as a loose, free-floating category, they wouldn't be as easy to find in our wiki-menus. If they link to absolutely nothing else. Heck, for that matter, is Ib in the shivering sea "part" of Essos? We lump it in due to contact it has but... I finally got my hands on a copy of The World of Ice and Fire and I'm still going through it all, but in short, the off-shore islands (all of them) are not really considered "part" of "Sothoryos" (unlike how Lys is basically part of Essos). The regions are grouped together, though distinct, and they are: *The Summer Islands *Naath *The Basilisk Isles *Sothoryos Basilisk Isles are basically the super-Stepstones, with worse pirates, slavers, cuthroats, etc. Not a pleasant place. But it turns out that Sothoryos itself has no indigenous civilizations. It's like an homage to old Edgar Rice Burroughs tropes about "Darkest Africa". It's like Jumangi in there. There's all sorts of horrible plagues and the wildlife...they have dinosaurs. Not like T-rexes but "wyverns" are basically pterodactyls, and they've got raptor-like animals (not bigger than a person, but capable of killing a person, the same could be said of a dog). Turns out that all of the coastal cities on maps of Sothoryos were built by slavers. Zamettar, Gorgossos, etc. They're either Ghiscari or Valyrian (or conquered by Valyrians) but all later abandoned. The only "indigenous" city is Yeen, but it was abandoned before modern history - they're just mysterious ruins, King Solomon's mines type stuff. As for the Summer Islands, basically, civilization there started out when the Ghiscari Empire was still strong, 5,000+ years ago. Up to that point they hadn't explored beyond their islands, but a Ghiscari ship got blown there by a storm. So they started exploring around the neighboring lands, contacted the Naathi, and tried to explore "mainland" Sothoryos, and tried to make settlements on it as the Ghiscari and Valyrians did - and met with just as little success, due to all of the harsh local factors the others ran into. At any rate as the Summer Islands grew in wealth through trade powerful local princes got quick money by selling defeated prisoners into slavery. Then one warrior-queen who had been enslaved but escaped conquered/united all of the islands and adamantly forbade involvement in the slave trade ever again. The unification didn't survive after her daughter's reign. Currently the Summer Islands are divided into several princedoms - each small island has one prince, but nine tenths of the population is on the three big islands, and each of those is large enough to have multiple princedoms on it. On the whole, while they are not politically unified they are still quite a peaceful place. With little land area they didn't want to devastate it in wars, burning out farmland and enemy towns, so all warfare in the Summer Islands is more akin to really large and formally agreed upon tournament melees - that way only the warriors get hurt. Losers who surrender are exiled instead of being executed, which is where Xho came from. So the problem is that there really is no native civilization on Sothoryos, they're wild and dangerous tribes and even the Summer Islanders couldn't retain a beachhead on Sothoryos for long. What else would we call them? Summer Islands, Naath, and the Basilisk Isles? "Isles of the Summer Sea?" "Islands near Sothoryos"? This is an ongoing conundrum I've been having.--The Dragon Demands (talk) 03:46, November 12, 2014 (UTC)